Dr Peterson is the Fred Cobb Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, a DukeMed Scholar, and the Past Executive Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI), Durham, NC, USA.

Dr Peterson is the Principal Investigator of the National Institute of Health, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Spironolactone Initiation Registry Randomized Interventional Trial in Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction (SPIRRIT) Trial He is also the Principal Investigator of the Data Coordinating Centers for the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS), National Cardiac Surgery Database, the American College of Cardiology National Cardiac Database (ACC-NCDR) and the American Heart Association Get With the Guidelines Database (AHA-GWTG). Dr Peterson also oversees multiple industry sponsored clinical studies.

Additionally, Dr Peterson serves on multiple national committees and guideline and performance measure development groups. Dr Peterson is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the Association of American Physicians (AAP), and the Association of University Cardiologists (AUC).

Since 2013, Dr Peterson has been voted one of world’s top 400 most influential researchers in biomedicine. as well as named by Thomson Reuters as a ‘Highly Cited Researcher’, ranking him among the top 1% most cited in clinical medicine. He is a Contributing Editor on the Journal of the American Medical Association and is a recognized leader in outcomes and quality research with over 1200 peer-reviewed publications in the field.

Starks, MA, Dai, D, Nichol, G, Al-Khatib, SM, Chan, P, Bradley, SM, Peterson, ED, and American Heart Association's Get With the Guidelines-Resuscitation Investigators, . "The Association of Duration of participation in get with the guidelines-resuscitation with quality of Care for in-Hospital Cardiac Arrest." American Heart Journal 204 (October 2018): 156-162.